Hi Steve, your comments here are pretty on the mark.

To give you an example my Dad survived the fire with house intact at Kinglake West, KLW [0] which is closer to the relief base in Whittlesea than Flowerdale which up the road. By Tuesday my brother, sister, her bloke managed to secure a generator, petrol and deliver it by smuggling the thing in. We are now in the process of organising 3 x 1K litre IBC Shutz’s [1] to enable a sterile source of bulk water. After this the basics are covered. We simply are not going to wait for top-down responses. This is pretty much a “best-case scenario” of the 3 basics covered.

It’s +day7 at the moment and while “shelter”, “power” are there for my Dad in Flowerdale releif is just tricking in. I was pretty shocked at the “lack of speed” outer areas like Flowerdale. By Thursday Pete’s twits [2] starting getting out. That is +day6 after the fire and people are there without basics of Water, food, shelter. [3] Pretty staggering in some ways if you consider the distance from KLW to Flowerdale is <10Km. Not everyone in that region has access to outside support, people who have the time & ability to source the mountains of kit, then the logistics to move stuff 30-50Km or more into the disaster zone at the same time hacking around the cordon. What has to happen is the bottom-up response has to be matched by the top-down response. The response has to be measured with flexibility. Edges hacked off as you suggest.

Q) My biggest fear is a proportion of the displaced, will go into a spiral decline. How can this be checked?

“… I am sure there is some way to permit the flow of essential supplies to these residents who are effectively being blockaded in their own towns …”

This is one thing I’m sure some individuals have worked around. I’m also noticing “reliance” on authorities but only because there is no other option. What makes the Flowerdale response so p*ss-poor is there are a lot of other small communities that don’t have access to Coms, influence or outside help. The cordon line at Whittlesea to Kinglake didn’t lift until a) group of Kinglake residents started to make their voices heard and b) one held together blasted the premier live on @774Melbourne until he couldn’t give a reasonable answer.

[0] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157613465373056/

[1] Despite the fact there is a 63K litre tank & bore. The tank is contaminated with poly-liner which burnt to the ground. Pump head burnt & no power.

[2] http://twitter.com/rexster

[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3274188584/